


down the burning ropes

by clairedearing



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Co-Dependent Relationships, Drabble, F/M, Spoilers, dub-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-10
Updated: 2012-11-10
Packaged: 2017-11-18 08:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/559029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clairedearing/pseuds/clairedearing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not a love story. [A drabble centered around Sévérine]</p>
            </blockquote>





	down the burning ropes

**Author's Note:**

> This should be a two piecer. I wanted to follow it up with a parallel Bond/Q, so we'll see if that happens and this turns into a series or a multi-chapter deal. Also, it says dub-con, but there's no mention of rape or anything too particularly gritty.

This is not a love story. In love stories the main character is not sold for sex, nor does she have a tattoo on the inside of her wrist that brands her. Love stories take place in beautiful places, not the dirt and grime of a ghetto where men come in and out every few minutes.

The reason that this is not a love story is because she begun said story believing that it was.

In love stories the man is almost always foreign and enigmatic. In love stories the man lavishes the girl with riches and compliments and promises to 'leave to far off places'.

"Don't you want to see the world?" he asks, and for a moment the sun catches his blond hair, and she thinks that she only wants to see it if it's with him.

(It's not enough years later that she'll look back and scold herself for being so foolish.)

-

This is not a love story. In love stories the main character doesn't learn how to handle guns and kill targets. It's only a love story in the way his hand cups hers to adjust her grip, and how he gives her words of praise when she does it correctly. (She takes the praise and stores it away, going over it when she thinks of how 'lucky' she is.)

These are the happy days, where they live in hotels with riches she sometimes has trouble understanding are hers, and gifts every morning along side breakfast. (A part of her realizes that she's seen the pearl necklace before, around a different neck, or the diamond ears clasped on someone else's ears, but she always shoves it aside and thinks 'well, they look much better on me'.)

But, she's never happy with gifts and finery and far off places.

She's happy being by his side. (Until she's not.)

-

In love stories the man is never damaged like this. The first time he truly terrifies her is the day she watches him grab his upper teeth, and yank, taking half his face with him. He yells at her in a way that makes her want to run far far away - in a way where he never gets above a certain decibel and is nearly casual - because he sounds like he will kill her and not even care.

The first time is truly the special one, because she has hope. She drags herself forward, and cups his collapsed cheek with her hand, and his normal one with her other, and she kisses him and promises him that she loves him no less, that'll she'll always be here, by his side, that the last thing she sees will be him.

The first time is truly the special one, because he looks at her when she pulls away and she tells herself that he cares about her and that he wants them to be happy, when she knows that he doesn't.

-

This is not a love story. In love stories the man doesn't refrain from physical abuse to heap emotional abuse onto it. The man doesn't force the woman to watch the bloodied corpses of his kills and conquests. The man doesn't make the woman feel unsafe in her own bedroom with the door locked, a million miles between them.

There are some elements. If she was a writer, she'd document them. The man is charming, and powerful. He makes others respect him and her. The man spends money on her and kills any man who tries to touch her. The man promises safety and happiness. These are all things the man does.

But this isn't a love story.

(This is a nightmare.)

-

In love stories the man does not make the woman kill countless people. He doesn't make her feel scared, or unsafe.

In love stories the man does not assign three men to keep watch over her, and lie and say it's to protect her when they both know it's to make sure she doesn't run.

In love stories the woman does not tremble at the mere thought of the man.

(In love stories the woman does not sleep with the man who promises to kill the person she loves.)

-

In love stories the man does not have other men kick and punch her. The man does not leave her with men who break her lip open and break her nails, and tie her up.

In love stories she is not left in the hot sun to bake.

-

This is not a love story.

In love stories the women don't hate their supposed saviors, but this is all she feels. They come out and stare at her, both uncaring, that she's roasting like a pig on a roaster.

She hates him, she thinks, but it's not directed at Silva. She doesn't thinks he has it in her to hate him. It's James fucking Bond that she loathes. She hates him. She stands there with a shot of scotch or whiskey on her head, and flies bite at her lip, already knowing that she's going to die, and James Bond has the nerve to miss, and miss so that he completely misses her and the chance to end it all with a quick bullet in her skull.

In love stories the woman doesn't hate her would be savior, but James Bond is not her savior, and all he's done is lie to her, just like everyone else.

It's awful, she thinks, that the man she loves kills her with a bullet to her stomach, and that no matter how much she fears him, she'll hate James Bond even more.

(Sévérine was never one for love stories in the first place.)


End file.
